en,
after obviously impatient waiting, the time came when he might light a
long cigar, he puffed out a stream of smoke with a sigh of relief, and
the table was no longer shaken from that on. Presently some remark
drew from him the reply, "No; the most desirable things in the world
are health and sleep. I would give two million dollars to be able to
sleep six hours each night. I would give twice that to be able to
digest a good meal properly. I would give I don't know what to be able
to rest, just rest quietly again."

And the lady next him said: "How well I understand that feeling! I
don't see why we should be compelled to go on, on, on at that pace.
Sometimes now when I have to drive in a cab I can barely keep myself
from shrieking out aloud from sheer nervousness. I have not dined at
home in my own house for three months except once, and that was when,
in reply to a remonstrance to my daughter for going out so much, she
said she would dine at home on Christmas Day. It is this perpetual
rush, I expect, makes us so nervous; but it is so hard to stop, even
when our nerves pay the price."

[Illustration: Naval Brigade Passing Through Ladysmith.]

* * * * *

Coming out of a newspaper office in New York I happened to meet an old
friend of the Cuban war times. Paler, thinner, and more drawn his face
looked in the V of his turned-up collar than when I had seen him last.
After talking for a few minutes I asked him whither he was going, and
found he was going to take a special kind of bath and rubbing, which
was part of the treatment he was undergoing for the desperate nervous
trouble he was suffering from.

"It is pretty hard lines," said he. "As you know, I never drank, and
took fairly good care of myself. I have not slept more than an hour or
two for the past week."

Then he told me how, going home to Brooklyn a few evenings before, the
nervousness had come so badly on him that he had to hire a
boy to go with him. He could not go across the bridge alone.

"At the present moment," said he, "there are nine men in our office
suffering from the same complaint."

He seemed to think that the treatment was doing little good; that
doctors could do next to nothing.

"Rest, long rest, is what we want, I suppose; but how can a fellow get
rest working in a big newspaper office in this city?"

* * * * *

The Remington machine had been rattling on like a Maxim gun